How Trump’s views on crypto have shifted from “fraud” to NFT mania
After news broke that former US President Donald Trump was launching a collection of non-fungible token (NFT) trading cards in his likeness, it’s worth recalling that he wasn’t always so open to the cryptocurrency sector.
In fact, Donald Trump’s collection of 45,000 NFTs minted on the Polygon (MATIC) blockchain was met with hype after he announced the launch on his social media platform Truth Social on December 15, and quickly sold out at its original price of $99.
Holders of a Trump NFT also get a chance to win a dinner with the former president, play golf with him at his golf club, have Zoom calls, have a face-to-face meeting with Trump, as well as receive memorabilia hand-signed by Trump himself.
Trump wasn’t always a fan
That said, Trump started out with a very skeptical attitude toward the new asset class, states in July 2019, when he was still in the White House, that he was not a fan of virtual assets with “highly volatile” value:
Two years later, the former president referred to Bitcoin (BTC) as a “fraud,” saying he didn’t like it “because it’s another currency that competes against the dollar,” which he wanted to be the “currency of the world.” As he explained:
“And I don’t think we should have all the world’s Bitcoins out there. I think they should regulate them very, very highly. (…) It takes the edge off the dollar and the meaning of the dollar.”
Criticism of NFT launch
As for his recent NFT adventure, not all of Trump’s supporters are on board. Keith and Kevin Hodge, stand-up comedians and vocal Trump fans, posted on Twitter that “whoever told Trump to do this should be fired.”
In another mailso they:
“Man, when all the Patriots are looking for is hope for the future of our country and Trump hypes everyone up with a ‘BIG ANNOUNCEMENT’ and then drops a low quality NFT rally video as the ‘announcement,’ it just pushes people away…Damn .”
Meanwhile, the resale of Trump Digital Trading Cards continues, surpassing 7,092 ETH in volume on the NFT trading platform Open seacurrently worth about $6.63 million, considering the price of Ethereum at the time of publication.
Interestingly, not all of the proceeds from the sale will be directed to Trump’s 2024 campaign, but will instead go to the former president himself under a licensing deal, which some of his aides expressed concern over, The New York Times Michael C. Bender and Maggie Haberman reported.
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